White smoke in engine bay

[The ROMAN]

Well I have a stupid story. I just replaced a blown turbo inlet gasket and reinstalled the manifold/turbo/turbo lines. I checked the radiator since I lost a decent amount of coolant and left the cap off to bleed while I checked for exhaust/oil/coolant leaks. After a couple minutes of running, the car starts smoking around the exhaust manifold. So I shut the car off and check for oil or coolant leaks from the turbo lines...none that I can see. Now my dad tells me that it is the PB Blaster I used on the manifold bolts burning off and that it will stop after a few minutes. So I start the car and let it run, still coolant in the rad, and the smoke finally burns off.....and the car overheats. I'm like wtf until I realize that the smoke may have been coolant blowing by the headgasket and the reason the smoke stopped is cause I burned off all the coolant, which it looks like I did when I look in the rad and coolant tank, which is now empty.

My question is does this sound like what happened? And is my headgasket gone, maybe head too? First thing tomorrow I'm gonna fill the rad and see what happens when I start it, but I can't stop thinking that I'm an idiot who blew my headgasket in my own damn driveway...

[Grenade180sx]

any type of oils touching your manifold will smoke. depending on how much oil touches it will tell u a basic idea on the burn off time. your car over heated because air is in the system. jack the front of the car up. turn the heater on full blast and let it warm up to operating temp and fill radiator as needed.

[The ROMAN]

Yep I'm planning on doing the whole coolant system bleeding first thing tomorrow.

[singlecamslam]

well what did the smoke smell like? Because if you have air in your system it doesnt necessarily means you're overheating even though your temp gauge says so. I had air in the system but i had a heat gun thing and showed that my block and head were at 190 degrees while my temp gauge was off the charts. Bleed your system and try again.

[The ROMAN]

I found the air relief valve, but does anyone know where exactly the coolant drain bolt is (engine drain not the rad)? I found out it's on the driver side for KAs, but I'm not sure which bolt it is for SRs.

[singlecamslam]

its on the drivers side and its like a little screw thing, you have to use a philips screwdriver and it doesnt stick out, but you'll see its a little plastic plug.